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Coulton GlazingPrivate Detective

Chapter 1 - The Empty Bottle

My office can be a lonely place when there are no clients, no work, and the bottle of Scotland’s finest export is empty. I was not exactly broke, I still had a little left over from my last case, but I was being careful. In my business money comes in waves, sometimes a month’s work can earn enough to live on for a year – but mostly it doesn’t. If I was careful with my spending, what I had would probably last me until the next case. Probably, but not definitely. It could be a month or more before my next client walked through the door. And that was the reason the whisky bottle was still empty and had not been refilled.

To hell with it, I told myself. It could also only be a few hours before my next client walked through the door, then I would regret forcing myself to go without the necessities of life – like whiskey. Angrily I stood up and headed to the nearest off licence. Eleven in the morning was too late in the day to be totally sober when there was no work on.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not an alcoholic. I drink because I want to, not because I need to. My urgent desire to get a bottle in now was mostly due to boredom. With no work on I have to wait in the office hoping for something to appear. I would not have been rushing to the offie if I had a client. When I am working I can sometimes go hours without a drink.

Soho, London, is busy at any time of day or night. Normally I am used to it, but when you have been dry since before breakfast, a crowd is simply an annoying barrier between you and the nearest off licence. So when a crowd of people covered the pavement and most of the road I did not politely ask "please will you get out of my way" - there was no 'please', but there were a few extra unnecessarily crude adjectives.

And when a large bloke blocked my path and asked me just as politely, and using even more crude adjectives, exactly who I thought I was pushing, there was nearly a violent scene.

The guy was a man mountain. True, most of it was fat, but there was enough muscle hidden beneath the blubber to convince me that he could lift me up and throw me high enough that I could pay my personal regards to the guys aboard the nearest NASA shuttle. But that was not what stopped me. If necessary I fight dirty, and sometimes when not necessary. I go for the testicles and kneecaps, and in an emergency I can break an opponent's nose with one blow or burst their eardrums. This 6'6" hunk of fat and muscle may have had the strength and brute force of a charging rhino, but he would have the speed of an one legged Koala, and the agility of partially set concrete.

What stopped me from taking the pointless route of mindless violence was that the crowd moved to get a better view of the street brawl they thought was about to start, and I finally saw what had caused the crowd to gather in the first place.

Lying on the pavement with his back partially resting against the window of a sex shop was an elderly man. He had a shocked look on his face as though he could not believe the things displayed in the store's window. But I would guess that his look of surprise was not due to the selection of adult toys and erotic lingerie, but to the knife sticking in his throat. He was either dead or unconscious, dead I guessed because if he had lost consciousness while alive the look of surprise would almost certainly have slipped from his face - that expression spoke of dying while still aware of his own passing, and while still shocked at the manner of his imminent demise. But even if I was wrong and he was still alive, he would be dead before paramedics could do anything, the wound was sickeningly terminal.

Speaking of the paramedics, where were they? Judging from the size of the crowd this had not just happened, the ambulance should be here by now. The reason for it's absence suddenly found it's way into the thing that I laughingly call my brain. No one had called for one yet. Good old British public, they love a spectacle, a murder will drag people in from streets away. But get involved? Phone for help? Oh no, let someone else do that. And today it looked like that someone else was going to be me!

As I got out my mobile I half heartedly asked if anyone had already phoned for an ambulance, and got the expected silence as a reply. Then I asked if anyone had phoned the police, this time the silence was broken by the sound of nervous shuffling feet as people tried to back away from me at the mention of police. I sighed, good old responsible, caring, British public.

Once I had dialled the three nines and made the necessary call I thought I could ask a couple of preliminary questions. This was more for something to do than to be helpful. The cops would ask them again when they arrived, they would not want the results of my work, but I could at least get the great unwashed thinking along the right lines. Besides, I had been the one to report the incident, I was going to have to stick around until the cops arrived and asking questions was something to occupy my mind while I waited.

"Anyone see the incident?" I asked. More nervous scuffling of feet. A couple of people began to back away. Both obviously had seen something and did not want to get involved. Nonchalantly I held up my mobile phone as though to check the time on it. Modern technology has made my job a lot easier in the past few years, and one of those improvements was putting cameras in mobile phones. I was getting quite good at taking photographs while apparently checking the time on my mobile. If no witnesses actually came forward the police might be grateful for photographs of the two reluctant ones.

I tried a few other generalities such as "Did anybody know the victim?", but all I got was more silence and more shuffling of feet. Eventually the real police arrived, but I had long finished asking anything by then and was busy giving off my own silence. The ambulance arrived almost at the exact same time as the police, and the paramedics confirmed what I had already guessed, the old man was dead. The police were beat cops, the detectives were probably still finishing their coffee, and beat cops have little authority other than to ask if there were any witnesses and cordon off the area. They did this with surprising efficiency, then got round to moving on anyone that had not come forward as a witness, which was everyone. Finally, as I was about to let myself be moved on along with everyone else, one of the cops remembered to ask who had called the incident in.

I had not seen anything, was useless as a witness, and would only be waisting my own time if I came forward. But there was no point in not doing so, I had called the emergency services on my own mobile, the one in my own name, not one of the phones I had under fictitious identities, and they would have traced my call. So, resigned to a fate of several hours waiting in a police station, I admitted that I was the person who had phoned the authorities.

When they find out I am a private detective, the police fall into one of two categories. The first group are those who consider us useful in that we keep some of the more useless cases away from them (a private dick can spend as much time as the customer can afford looking into a hopeless missing person's case, the police can only afford so much time before marking the case "open but unsolved"). The second group are those who consider us a pain in the backside, meddling amateurs with a badge they should not own, ripping of clients, and getting in the way of the real police. The cop who took my card was neither of these. He was young, probably fresh out of Hendon. He still looked up to the detectives, no doubt hoped to be one himself one day. When he saw "detective" on my card, he immediately thought of me as his superior and came over all polite.

I have several different types of business card, some just have my office address and phone number, some also have my mobile number. A few also have my home number and address - it was the latter type that I had given to the cop. I told him I would be at the office all day, home all evening, and could also be caught on the mobile number anytime. He accepted this and said that someone would call me. I nodded to him and added "Try and make it before six o'clock. That way I'll probably be sober enough to help.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I didn't get the whiskey in the end. If no work came in I'd probably drink the lot, and be in no fit state if a detective did turn up. Instead I spent the time reading the paper, considering changing my advert in the Yellow pages to something more eye catching, and drinking coffee. The advert had to be changed because it brought in very little custom. It had to be my wording, other detectives got good work through the Yellows. Unfortunately I could never think of anything catchy enough. Perhaps I just needed to move higher up the listings. Maybe I should change the name to "Acme Detective Agency". Looking in the local volume I found that someone already used that name, and was toying with the idea of "Aardvark Detective Agency" when the door opened.

I was hoping for a client, but expecting my visitor to be a cop detective. So I was taken by complete surprise when the man mountain I had nearly had a fight with earlier that morning walked in. I stood up ready to both defend and counter attack. The guy was obviously a fighter, he recognised my move, but just smiled in amusement and nodded his respect at my style. Then he said "Relax, I'm not here to fight" and sat down uninvited in the client's chair in front of my desk. I sat back down behind the desk and waited for him to tell me why he was there.

"I overheard what you said to the cop. You are a private dick." He said as a statement, then added as a question "You still sober?" It took me a moment to realise he was referring to my closing shot to the cop before I replied "Yeah, I decided that if I was lying under the table singing faintly obscene sea shanties when the police arrived, it might be remembered when it came time to renew my licence."

The mountain of fat and muscle threatening to break my visitor's chair under his weight nodded at my words as though they were the wisdom of a sage, then explained:

"I heard you say you was a private dick, and I was impressed by the way you took charge and did the right thing when the rest of us just stood gawking, so I think you are the guy I want. The kid cop was happy to give me your name and show me your card with this address on it. He was a fool, but a helpful fool, he'll never make it as a cop. Now here is the deal; I need you to find out who killed Doug - that was the guy's name, Doug Holland. I can tell you precious little about him apart from his address, occupation, and that he was a nice guy who did not deserve to die. If you take the case I'll pay you cash, but you don't get to ask me any questions about me, you don't even get to know my name. You are not allowed to investigate me, but if you do find out anything by accident you can forget it instantly. You want the case on those terms? If not I'll find someone else."

I thought about it. It sounded about as kosher as a bacon bagel, but I needed the work. Besides it was not as though I didn't occasionally do work my mother would frown on. So I replied to him "I'll need a name to call you, it does not have to be genuine, and a way of contacting you. Also, if I work on those terms I charge double." He nodded and with a smile said "You can call me Fred Smith. I'll give you a mobile number to call me on, don't bother to try tracking it, the phone is registered to a dead person whose name I got off a stone. As to the money, I kind of expected that." He pulled a fat envelope out of his pocket, wrote a phone number on it and tossed it across to me "That do to start?" he asked. The envelope was full of twenties, at least a couple of hundred. I nodded in reply and told him "You said you could give me Holland's address and occupation." He took the envelope back, scribbled the address on it then returned it to me, saying "He was a jeweller, the address is his shop, he used to live over it, alone, I think - he may have been divorced, I once heard him mention a wife, but not with love. Either they fell out of love or he was queer and she was his beard. That do you?"

I hesitated for a moment then carefully asked "Can I know why you want me to find his killer?". He shrugged and replied "Not the full details, but he once did me a good deed, got me out of a lot of trouble, and saved me from getting into worse. That was years ago, but I was never in a position to repay him until now. He wanted to retire but could not afford to, I was going to give him the money to pay off his mortgage; then his savings and pension would have been enough to live on. I was going to meet him to give him the money, and was on the way to see him when he was killed. He knew I was coming, so should have been at his shop. What he was doing in Windmill Street is beyond me, took me a moment to realise it was him. And even then I went to his shop afterwards, hoping he was there, hoping it was just someone who looked exactly like him. It wasn't. There was a note taped to the door for me, it just said 'Sorry, I had to go out urgently, back in about an hour. There is a pub on the corner, meet me there if you can wait.'"

I asked him if Doug Holland had been alive when he saw him and he told me "Just, for about three seconds. I didn't see his killer, he was gone, Doug was lying on the pavement and I pushed through the gathering crowd to get to him. He looked at me, but there was no recognition, he was dying and knew it. The knife in his throat had not severed his windpipe, at least not completely, but he was thinking of the afterlife and all he said was 'I repent', then he died. I pretended to be just another one of the ghouls gathering to watch him die and stepped back into the crowd, right into your path it would appear."

That was all he could give me. He did not really know the deceased, only seen him a handful of times since Holland had "done him a good deed", and knew nothing about his personal life. They talked about the weather, sport, television, the usual things. 'Fred Smith' did not find it suspicious that Holland had never given anything personal away, but then Mr Smith was no doubt too busy avoiding giving anything of his own personal life away to think of Holland's reticence.

And that was it, with nothing more to tell me Smith went, and left me with an envelope full of twenties, and a murder to investigate.

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